Connections

Photo by Regan Wann

Every fall, at least for my adult life, I have noticed spider activity.  It's not always the same.  Years ago, in our last house, the massive wolf spiders would appear in our bathtub, harbingers of cooling weather and shorter days.  They would do this bobbing dance, threatening us off of their warm, if too slippery to escape, new digs while we tried to scoop them up in a glass jar to return them outside.  Inevitably the next morning, there would be another bouncing spider the size of our palm in the tub.

For all I know it was only ever one spider, it just kept coming back inside, the point is this annual interaction always let us know fall was on the way.

Recently, staying in a cabin tucked deep in some mountainous woods, my party (real world party, although we did also play some D&D while we were there, this was a real world encounter) found the most massive Black Widow I've ever seen in my life.  No joke, her abdomen was the size of a dime.  We treated that lady with a LOT of respect as we relocated her off of the porch and into the woods, but all of us agreed that seeing her was a truly magical moment for us all. 

One of my favorite type of spider is definitely the orb weaver.  This is a group, not a single spider, and you see them get active in the evenings of the fall.  They build gloriously massive webs, the kind you think of when you read Charlotte's Web, with connection points on buildings, trees, plants, other spiderwebs, the ground.  Complicated labyrinths, circles and loops, sometimes a zig-zag finishing flair reminding you that webs are function meeting form. 

As I consider creativity and campaigns, I find myself thinking about that place where function and form connect.  The sticky webs that entice us in, keep us hooked in and wanting more.  We are about to take a long weekend in another cabin in a mountainous wood (it's a thing, we like it) and I, for one, will be looking for the spiders while I'm there - thinking about how nature is art, art is nature, and trying to connect with those lovely 8-legged harbingers of seasonal change. 

#spidersofdnd #myfavoritecantrip #connections #natureisart #webs